Still Midnight (18 page)

It was a young polis, high voice, just new to it: “… regarding an incident at Brian’s Bar on the weekend of the fourth?”

“Nah, nah.” Shugie’s rumbling smoker’s voice. “I wiz out of it, and ah, I cannae just remember.”

“Well, Mr. Parry,” said the polis. “Judging from the overwhelming and pungent stench of urine in your domicile, it is my firm conclusion that you do indeed have fuck-all recollection of that particular incident.” The second polis was laughing softly, repeating the punch line: “stench of urine.”

“And so, Mr. Parry, we will be getting the fuck out of this disgusting abode pronto.” He stopped for a laugh himself. “Thanking you, but offers of tea and biscuits will be declined.”

“And biscuits!” echoed the giggling second polis.

Shugie said nothing. He stood and took the abuse until a sudden thump came from the kitchen ceiling.

The polis shifted their feet. “Is there someone else in this house?” It was the other one talking. Shugie didn’t answer him.

“Mr. Parry?”

Shugie mumbled, “Cheeking my fucking…”

The giggler was suddenly stern. “Is there someone else in the fucking house, Parry?”

“… disrespectful and that, talking about smells and that, whit’s your fucking house like, then?”

“Come on, we’ll just go and see, Paul.” It was the first polis again, the comedian.

Shugie spoke up. “My mate—he’s… sleeping it off.”

“Right, answer us when we fucking speak tae ye, well.”

“ ’S get the fuck out of here before we catch something.”

“Too fucking right… disgusting.”

They were walking away, Shugie grumbling behind them. Finally the front door slammed shut.

Pat raised his head from his knees and whispered, “I can’t… my fucking nerves are shredded here.” He reasoned, “Eddy, I know you’re the contact, but I’m facing the same time as you and I can’t fucking take it.”

Eddy raised a hand. Pat expected him to get angry but he looked frightened too. “Let’s go and phone and then we’ll come back and move him.”

“Where to?”

“Well, you fucking decide.” Here was the spite. “You fucking come up with somewhere better if you’re so much fucking smarter than me.”

“Breslin’s.”

Eddy blinked. His bottom lip flapped as he thought of things to say. He licked his lips, disappointed that Pat had come up with somewhere so much better. “Let’s phone.”

The roll shop was tiny, little more than a dirty-looking door with a chalkboard outside announcing the availability of tea and full breakfast butties. Pat made Eddy stop here because he knew it sold newspapers too.

He stepped across the pavement, alive with the urgent tenderness of a lover orchestrating a chance encounter. Workmen in dusty jeans stood by the counter. The heavy aroma of spitting fat filled the narrow room with sticky air. Trying to act calm Pat turned to the newspaper stand. She was looking out at him.

A bad photo, grainy head and shoulders, taken by a mobile phone, but it was clear enough for him to see what he wanted. Long black hair parted in the middle, a large nose, hooked like a finger curling come hither. White perfect smile and hooded eyes that spoke only to him. She was injured but not dead. The first paragraph said that they were a respectable family. Shows what they know, thought Pat.

She was making a face in the picture, puffing up her cheekbones and pouting a little, not tarty, just sweet. Pat reached out to pick up a copy and felt the texture of the rough paper kiss his fingertips, smelled the hot fat as sweet, the daylight glinting on the greasy wall as a sparkle. That she existed made the tawdry present bearable. He folded the paper and tucked it under his arm, smiling, as happy as if it was her arm, and ordered two egg and bacon rolls and two cans of ginger, handing over the money to the beautifully hungover fat man behind the counter.

He read on as the rolls were made. Her name was Aleesha, she was sixteen, a pupil at Shawlands Academy, loved by all her classmates. Pat knew she would be popular, he’d known it. She had lost several fingers and was in intensive care in the Victoria Infirmary. At that he slowly dropped the paper, his mouth hanging open in amazement. He
knew
she would be in the Vicky. He just knew that she would be there. It was as if they were connected somehow, as if he had picked the place they would meet again.

He read about the terrible damage to her hand and empathized with her pain, with the awful disfigurement she would have to live with, but deep inside he was pleased that he had shot her, because now she wouldn’t be perfect and a hundred miles above him, because he had caused her photo to be on the front of the paper and he could look at her whenever he wanted.

The rolls arrived and he carried them, fat dripping through the paper bag, out to the car. Eddy told him to be careful not to get grease everywhere; it was a hire car and they’d have to pay extra if they got stains on the seats and that. Use the newspaper on your lap, he said.

But Pat folded the paper carefully and tucked it into the pocket on the door, letting the fat get on his jeans instead.

“What’s it saying?” Eddy nodded at the paper.

Pat filtered through the story to find the facts. “She’s stable,” he said. “In the hospital. Intensive care.”

Eddy stopped chewing and stared at him. “Who’s stable?”

“The girl.”

“Oh, the one you shot?”

That stung, him saying that so lightly, as if it was a detail. Pat looked out of the window. “They’ve clues anyway.”

Eddy took another bite and asked through a mouthful, “Can I see?” He held his hand out to the paper but Pat hesitated. He didn’t want Eddy to touch his paper. He braced himself and handed it over casually.

They finished their rolls in silence, Pat holding a secret vigil over the paper until Eddy gave it back, and licking his fingers before accepting. He folded it nicely so that her face was visible and tucked her into the car door pocket. They drove on, looking for a phone box that didn’t have a camera right nearby. Cameras were all over the city like rats.

Finally Eddy stopped the car in a quiet street, a few spaces away from the phone box in case they were being watched, and they looked around, keeping their eyes up, looking for cameras on the sides of buildings and on streetlights. It was a residential area, a quiet street with big trees and bushes in front of the tenements.

“Right.” Eddy pulled on the hand brake and snapped his belt off.

“No.” Pat touched his arm with a staying hand. “No, I’ll do the phoning.”

Eddy looked at him. “Why?”

“ ’Cause you’ve been under a lot of pressure…”

Eddy liked that characterization. He nodded at the windscreen. “Well, be threatening. And tell them two million by tonight.”

“And we’ll call back with a drop place?” Pat knew that was what they had to do, they’d talked about it enough, but he wanted to make Eddy feel as if he was deciding.

“Aye, that’s right, that’s… a drop point. We’ll call back later.”

“When they’ve got the money?”

Eddy nodded again. “When they’ve got the money.”

Pat got out and took the newspaper with him.

SEVENTEEN

The street of tenements was tall and narrow but surrounded by fields, like a lone passenger crammed into the corner of an empty lift. The pink sandstone was stained to blood red over the years by the black belching from the backsides of cars and buses passing through the stone valley. It was part of a city now gone, the buildings running along either bank of a road that once snaked through other tall streets. All its neighbors had been knocked down before they crumbled away, the families of mine and dock and factory workers decanted to the projects and new towns.

The Anwars’ shop would never have excited the interest of an avaricious passerby. It was a poor corner shop. The shop front was painted with what looked like navy blue undercoat, matte and dusty from the street, with “Newsagents” hand-painted in red, weathered to pink, above the window. The window was frosted with dirt, the counter inside abutting glass obscured with adverts for newspapers and magazines and comics. A blue plastic ice cream selection board sagged drunkenly in the window, too far in to be read, too old to be true.

The close was straight across the road and the outside door didn’t give a good account of the neighborhood. Wired glass scarred with poorly drafted graffiti in felt-tip. Names on the intercom were messy, biroed onto stickers, stuck over the outside of the plastic. Something dark yellow, possibly paint, had been spilled on the red floor tiles and scrubbed into the grout.

Nestled in among the messy names, “J. Lander” was typewriter-written in an old-fashioned font, the plastic over his name was clean, as if he had tended it carefully over the years. Morrow pressed the button.

“Hello?”

“Is this Mr. Lander?”

“It is indeed.” His voice was high but steady, neat, like his nameplate. “Who is this?”

“Mr. Lander, we’re from Strathclyde CID. We’d like to speak to you concerning Mr. Anwar.”

“Of course.” The door clicked open in front of them and Lander came back on the intercom. “Two up, first on the left.”

Morrow thanked him and he hung up.

The inside of the close was clear, no piles of rubbish bags or discarded furniture, well tended, but the building was in bad shape: a white plastic mobility handrail had come loose from its shorings at one end and was resting forlornly on the floor, as spent as the tenant who had requested it. The walls above the skirting board were damp-bubbled, crumbling but held together with thick burgundy gloss paint. The imprint of a heel in the skin of paint had burst a bubble and white plaster powder had been walked up and down the steps.

Above in the echoing stairwell a door opened. Footsteps clip-clopped out onto the landing and a man called over the balcony, “Hello?”

“Hello?” Morrow led Bannerman up the stairs. “Mr. Lander?”

“Aye, that’s you, come on,” he said, guiding them, as if there was any way of getting lost in a close. “Up this way.”

Morrow looked up and saw a small man in his sixties leaning over the rail, big hands clutching the banister. Brown cardigan, gray slacks with stay-press seams down the front, a neat white mustache no wider than his mouth, gray hair that had been tidied with a watered comb.

“Good morning, officers,” he said, withdrawing as soon as he was sure they had seen him and knew where to go.

Morrow reached the top of the stairs first and followed him through the brown front door. His front step was dust free, the welcome mat clean and square to the door.

She stepped into a moss green hallway and found Lander standing patiently at the door to the living room, watching behind her for Bannerman. When Grant stepped into the hallway behind her and shut the door Lander nodded, muttered a little orderly “uh-huh” to himself, and went into the living room, ready to receive them.

The hall had a single shelf above the radiator with a bowl for keys on it. On the back of the door was a single peg for a scarf. No coats chucked on chairs, no bags dumped on the floor, no shopping bag of rubbish left hanging on a handle ready to be taken out when someone remembered.

Morrow followed Bannerman into the living room.

An old-fashioned box television sat on a low table. A small settee in orange velvet and matching armchair, both old but well preserved. Hanging on the arm of the chair was a cloth pocket for TV remotes and a booklet of the weekly television listings inside. There was nothing in the living room that was not functional or essential, no display cabinet of half-loved ornaments or better-day mementos, no unread newspapers. It was more than bachelor-flat tidy. It was institutional tidy. Morrow made a mental note to check for a prison record.

They stood in front of the settee in a perfect equilateral triangle. Bannerman looked at Morrow expectantly, telling her to take charge of the questioning, as if he was saving his own moves for the more important interviews.

“Please,” said Mr. Lander, taking the prompt for himself, opening his hand to the settee. “Sit down.”

Against his orders Morrow sat in the armchair, and saw Lander’s eye twitch. He would have to sit next to Bannerman on the settee, sandwiched between them. He pulled his trousers up at the knees with an irritated flick of the wrist and sat down.

Morrow looked around. The electric bar fire was surrounded by framed photographs. She expected to see a wife, grandchildren, perhaps a mother in a formal pose, but instead found photographs of Lander in military uniform, standing among friends in uniform.

“A military man?” she said, apropos of nothing. Bannerman looked up, suddenly interested.

“Yes.” His tone was clipped. “Twenty years in the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders. Ten served in the First Battalion and then a further ten years in E Company.” As if he sensed her reservations he said, “E Company is the TA.”

The intense attraction of order had a pull over her too. She had considered the army herself. “Dedicated,” she said.

“Yes,” he said and thought about it. “Yes.” Patting his knees with his open hands he turned to Bannerman. “So, tell me about Mr. Anwar. Do you know who took him?”

They weren’t supposed to give away any information, but a stonewall was often cold news to an interviewee so Bannerman tempered it. “Well, Mr. Lander, I’m sure you’ve seen the papers. We really can’t say anything other than what’s in there—”

“He was taken by gunmen demanding a ransom?”

“Yes—”

“And Aleesha was shot in the hand?”

“But what I can tell you is that Mr. Anwar was kidnapped last night for a money ransom. Do you know anything about that?”

“Other than what was on the radio”—Lander breathed heavily through his nose, as if he was holding back a strong emotion—“all I know is I got a call this morning from his
cousin
”—he said the word disapprovingly—“telling me that I was not required this morning because Mr. Anwar had been indisposed last night. I had to dig for information. He’s over there.” He nodded out the window. “Now. Working the shop for him.”

Bannerman carried on. “Is Mr. Anwar a popular man? With locals?”